Farm Workers and the Churches

The Movement in California and Texas

By Alan J. Watt

Publication Year: 2010

In the mid-1960s, the charismatic César Chávez led members of California's La Causa movement in boycotting the grape harvest, and melon pickers in South Texas called a strike against growers, contesting unfair labor and wage practices in both states.
In Farm Workers and the Churches, Alan J. Watt shows how the religious and social contexts of the farm workers, their leaders, and the larger society helped or hindered these two pivotal actions.
Watt explores the ways in which liberal expressions of Northern Protestantism, transplanted to California and combined with the pro-labor wing of the Catholic Church and the heritage of Mexican popular piety, provided a fertile field for the growth of broad support for Chávez and his organizing efforts. Eventually, La Causa was able to achieve collective bargaining victories, including a historic labor contract between California agribusiness and farm workers.
The movement did not fare as well in Texas, where the combination of a locally weak union leadership, a more conservative Southern Protestant ethos, and the strikebreaking measures of the Texas Rangers all boded ill. However, a general Chicano/a movement ultimately took permanent root in the state, because of the workers' struggle.
Watt offers a careful examination of the complex interactions among religious traditions, social heritage, and ethnicity as these factors affected the course and outcomes of these two pioneering campaigns undertaken by La Causa.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

This work was successfully completed due to many persons who helped
me at various stages. My thanks to Mary Lenn Dixon and others at the
Texas A&M University Press for many editorial labors and to Dawn Hall
for copyediting. Thanks, too, to my academic mentors at Vanderbilt University,
namely, John Fitzmier, Dale Johnson, the late Howard Harrod...

Chapter 1. Introduction

On 1 April 1994, nearly 750 people assembled in the vineyards of Delano,
California, about thirty miles north of Bakersfield. Before beginning a
330-mile march to the state capital in Sacramento, they celebrated a morning
mass. During this service of worship, farm workers laid offerings on
an altar adorned by a statue of La Virgen de Guadalupe, patroness saint...

Part 1: California

Chapter 2. The Church, Home Missions, and
Farm Labor in California, 1920-40

In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 Mexico ceded most of the
present-day states of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and California
to the United States, officially opening California to further Anglo-American immigration. The following year miners discovered gold near
Sacramento, and one of the greatest mixtures of humanity in world history...

Chapter 3. From Service to Advocacy, 1940-64

As a result of World War II, a number of Mexican Americans realized significant economic gains in the 1940s and 1950s. The enrollment of minorities
in the armed forces helped to weaken racial obstacles and open up new
opportunities for them. A few Mexican Americans also took advantage
of the G.I. Bill and attended college. Others worked as civil employees...

Chapter 4. Religion and La Causa in California, 1962-70

Several factors led to the 1970 contract between the United Farm Workers
and the table grape growers of California. Chief among them was the
growing self-awareness of Mexican Americans as a political force. President
Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty stimulated some of this awakening.
Newly established government programs, many of which aggressively...

Image Plates

Part 2: Texas

Chapter 5. Churches, Mexicans, and
Farm Labor in Texas, 1930-60

Unlike California, Texas did not suddenly become populated by men
seeking fortunes in gold. Nor did large groups of midwesterners pour into
Texas in response to real-estate promotions. Instead, the Lone Star State
received a steady stream of immigrants over the course of an entire century.
Small Anglo-American colonies were first established in the 1820s...

Chapter 6. The Church and the
Farm Worker Movement in South Texas, 1966-69

As in California, the lives of some Mexican Americans in Texas improved
in the 1940s and 1950s. A number of them found work at the state's military
bases and in manufacturing. Although often employed in unskilled
jobs, they at least escaped dependence on part-time and exploitative farm
labor. On the political front, the League of United Latin American...

Image Plates

Chapter 7. Conclusion

This work has explored the roles played by and the interactions among
several Christian traditions in the farm worker movement, culminating
in events of the 1960s. In seeking to shed greater light on religious beliefs
and practices in the context of this phenomenon, I have employed the
interpretive lens of the (now Old) New Western History. This lens was...

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